Eliza Luz

Name: Eliza “Lizzie” Luz

Gender: Female

Age: 17

Grade: 12

School: Cochise High School

Hobbies and Interests: Exploring (urban and natural), climbing, hiking, camping, yoga, Dr. Who, travel

Appearance: Lizzy is curvy but athletic. She keeps her wheat blonde hair short and rarely attempts to style it, rolling out of bed and treating that as her hairstyle for the day. She stands 5 feet 8 inches and weighs in at 156 lbs. Her large green eyes are alert but look a little small beneath a broad forehead. She has a sharply pointed nose, round cheeks, and a full-lipped mouth always on the verge of breaking into a grin. She tends to wear a long, well-worn brown coat whenever the weather permits. Her clothes tend to be tight and functional jeans and t-shirts, which has the added benefit of outlining an hourglass figure. Her hands and feet are heavily calloused, and little scars and scabs run along her arms and legs from various small accidents. She never wears make-up.

On the day of her abduction, she was wearing well-worn blue jeans with ragged hems and a growing hole in the left knee, as well as a grey t-shirt with faded black lettering on its front. Her shoes were red-and-white sneakers with faded mudsplatters in a handful of places.

Biography: Eliza "Lizzie" Luz is a member of the expansive Luz clan. Years ago, her great-grandparents, Gregory and Avee Luz, a second-generation Spanish immigrant to California and a Mojave woman, respectively, were recently married and hurting from the Depression when they came to Kingman shortly before the US entered into World War II. Gregory was exempt from the draft as a result of a leg lost in a childhood accident, but as business boomed around Kingman he was able to establish a name for himself as an automotive and airplane mechanic. After making a small fortune doing contract work for the Ford Motor Company, Avee and Gregory purchased several acres of land just outside of town, determined to make themselves self-sufficient so they would never again be vulnerable to events like the Great Depression. Calling in numerous favors from the various friends and contacts Gregory had made in his years of work around town, they were able to build a sprawling three-story farmhouse out on their own land with their own crops.

This sprawling house became the core of the Luz family compound, spreading out among the acres of land all around, a miniature village of its own. Many of Gregory and Avee's numerous children ended up living on the land themselves, building their own houses and additions to the property, purchasing the outlying territory that no one else wanted.

Lizzie Luz was born to this strange, homely village-in-miniature, daughter of Gregory and Avee's fifth child, Oliver, and his wife Melody. They are one of the few families that live in the original house. Lizzie herself was the 3rd among 5 children, and from a young age she wandered too far, toddling off into the wide expanse of grassy plains and wooded thickets that surrounded their compound. For a long time this worried her parents, until well-meaning older siblings and cousins agreed to keep an eye on her.

But as she aged Lizzie quickly outstripped them all, roaming through woods and over creeks and clambering up trees and rocks and cliffs. By the time she was ten, Lizzie was used to camping around the Luz compound; 14, and she used her weekends and vacations to camp elsewhere, in parks and reserves around Arizona. In particular, she has spent many weekends exploring Hualapai Mountain Park.

Lizzie has never had a word for the emotion that drives her to explore. For as long as she can remember, she simply feels excited when she sees a place that she has never been, and searches for a way to get to it. From construction sites to forests to abandoned buildings and mines to national parks, Lizzie longs to explore, in every way possible. Camping is part and parcel of this self-same urge: a way to explore further and see more, to enjoy a place in the deep of the night as well as in the heat of day.

She is part of a small, tight-knit community of urban explorers around Arizona, who she discovered while researching locations online once she'd run out of places to investigate in Kingman. Through websites such as uer.ca and forums frequented by people who shared her interests, Lizzie soon found friends all along the west coast who could help her find new places to explore and teach her things she didn't know. She follows the common credo of urban explorers: take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints.

Lizzie tries not to draw much attention to herself in her family, preferring to be left alone as much as possible and making as little fuss as she can, so her siblings and cousins tend to get more attention. Melody feels guilty about how little Lizzie asks for from her parents, so when Lizzie asks she tends to say yes. Lizzie sometimes manipulates this quirk, both in her mother and among her friends. She's quick to capitalize on the guilt of others for personal gain, often asking for food, favors, money, and gifts from friends who have a tough time saying no. She can be a bit of a mooch.

One of her main non-exploration obsessions is Dr. Who, which she likes in particular because it speaks to her exploratory interests. She loves the show's essential optimism—that there is not only a vast universe waiting to be explored, but that humans are capable of making it better. One of the few non thrift-store pieces of clothing she owns is a specially-ordered replica of the 10th Doctor's long brown coat which she got as a present from her parents on her sixteenth birthday, made of a cotton/viscose blend that makes it comfortable to wear on all but the hottest Arizona days, though she tends to wear it mostly at night while camping.

Dr. Who is one of the very few exceptions to Lizzie's general disdain for modern media. She reads very little, with the exception of Kerouac and travel accounts in the vein of Into the Wild. She also loves nature documentaries such as the Planet Earth series and travel documentaries and accounts of all kind, since they show her the kind of places she wants to go, the kind of people who go there, and what is needed to make various kinds of travel attempts. She also loved the Lord of the Rings movies, in part for their breathtaking vistas and in part because they portrayed grand conflict on an epic scale in a way that also felt intimate and human. She plans to visit New Zealand some day.

Lizzie is an adept rock-climber for her age thanks to all her time spent at Hualapai and around Arizona. She is very familiar with Hualapai in particular since she has spent numerous weekends there since she was 14, and climbing and bouldering help to keep her in shape. She also practices yoga using some old dvds she found at a thrift store, mainly for the flexibility it provides her. Initially maintaining her flexibility was her sole concern, but in the past year she has become more interested in the history of yoga as a spiritual and mental exercise as well as physical one. Lizzie remains mostly areligious, but finds the meditative clarity her practice sometimes affords her very liberating.

Lizzie is friendly, but the often-volatile interaction between family members on the Luz compound has made her somewhat wary of confrontation. She tends to avoid fights and awkward situations because they give her a sense of emotional claustrophobia, of being trapped and pinned down by obligation. Her tendency to run away from her problems sometime makes it difficult to be her friend or significant other, since she is unlikely to actually deal with any pressing issues and will instead avoid the people involved. She would rather run from a problem than be stuck dealing with a complicated situation.

In school, Lizzie does adequately at most subjects without particularly excelling at any of them. She skipped second grade due to high test scores and has consistently managed to score well on all tests since, but her interests lie outside of school, and she treats most of her classes as an annoying obligation. Her grades suffered when she started high school due to the greater amount of homework, but her parents made her trips conditional to maintaining a 2.5 GPA, which Lizzie has reluctantly stuck to ever since. She tends to do well at subjects like Geometry since she has excellent spatial reasoning skills, and does sporadically well at scientific subjects, getting excited at their practical implementation but losing interest when they require mathematics. Her English grades tend to be low due to her indifference towards writing and reading. At present, her GPA is 2.52.

Her social life at school is similarly lackluster. She enjoys the company of her friends while there, but rarely sticks around for any activities or clubs, rushing out the door at the first opportunity to wander the trails and back alleys of Kingman. She lives for the moment the bell rings and feet hit the pavement outside the school door.

After graduation, Lizzie intends to go on a road trip and write about her experiences. All she wants is to travel—to see as much of the world as possible, to explore its every nook and cranny and see things few other people have. Such a life would keep her from being pinned down by the feuds and obligations that suffuse the Luz compound, letting her live on her own terms without any baggage to slow her down.

Lizzie is often troubled by a vague sense of being unimportant and inconsequential. In a big family, it's easy to feel lost and uncared for, and the Luz family is as big as they come. As much as she loves to travel, she also feels dwarfed by a world that is bigger than she could possibly see in one lifetime. But in spite of these moments of envy and insignificance, she still relished the intense mystery of the Luz family; the peculiar branches with all their secrets, the opportunity to explore amongst as broad a panoply of people as has ever been assembled in one place. The world may daunt her on occasion, but it in so way quenches her desire to see it. The world excites her, and in spite of her doubts Lizzie wants to see as much of it as she possibly can.

Advantages: Lizzie is equally at home exploring crumbling urban structures or camping in the heart of nature, which will serve her well in terms of basic survival needs. She is fit and even-tempered, which means she will be able to cope with a wide variety of situations both physically and mentally.

Disadvantages: Lizzie is pacifistic and avoids confrontation wherever possible, which will not serve her well when she is confronted with violence or the complicated emotions it in inspires. She is somewhat asocial and comes off as aloof and emotionally distant, which means it may be hard for her to form alliances or get people to trust her. Her emotional immaturity may get her in trouble in high-stress situations.

Designated Number: Female student no. 024

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Designated Weapon: 5-foot Zweihander

Conclusion: A Whovian!? Aah, a girl after me own heart. Because I like you, G024, a tip: You know where pacifism gets you? It gets you a reserved seat in the burn pile of your deceased classmates. Then again, that sword's mostly for show, so maybe it'll all work out in the end. - Dennis Lourvey

'The above biography is as written by Grim Wolf. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Grim Wolf

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Collected Weapons: 5-foot Zweihander (assigned weapon)

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